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What to do When Technical Support Fails?
trifster asks: "At this year's Comdex I purchased a Buslink USB 2.0 Cardbus adapter for my laptop. It was a good price and a partial impulse purchase, however it was defective out of the box. Before Christmas 2003, I set it back via Buslink's RMA process. It will be 2 months tomorrow, and I have not received my replacement nor have the 3 phone calls or 4 emails been addressed. What can one consumer do when he is on the East Coast and his hardware is held hostage on the West Coast? What have your experiences been in resolving these support SNAFUs?"
Check with a lawyer.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
tell whatever drone answers the phone that you need to speak to his/her supervisor.
keep moving up the ranks until someone takes action.
your phone calls produce nothing because the people you are talking to have no authority to take any action.
When you did not get a response, you had 30 days from purchase for full protection and 60 days for partial protection to have the CC company challenge the charge.
They would have given you the refund and backcharge the reseller.
I don't consider it morally wrong or fraud if you buy the exact same card from the exact same manufacturer. All you get is a working card -- which is what you were supposed to get in the first place. You don't make money on the transaction. The store doesn't lose money on the transaction. The manufacturer only loses the money it would have lost if it shipped a defective product to the store. I don't see anything wrong here.
Of course, it IS fraud if you put some other product in the box or return something that was out of warranty or abused. It's also wrong if you knew the item was broken before you bought it. But if you got screwed by a manufacturer, why not strike back?
Color me shocked! Seriously now, this is what can be expected with BusLink products. They are vastly inferior and a lot of times do not conform to the base performance of the standard specifications. You can watch BusLink products fail to enumerate multiple devices correctly or process enough data to multiple devices, where similar products based on NEC, Oxford Semiconductor, or Texas Instruments shine true.
Why purchase products based on chips from companies, anyways? Dramatically less chance of getting your coveted Linux support.
I had a KDS monitor that died after 8 months of use. Contacted Support had it RMA'd, said theyd ship me the same model with but in black/silver casing. I did the give us your credit card information and we'll send it immediately process. I got the new monitor in and it was 2 models below what i had. So i call technical support again, and they are soooooooo sorry. They tell me that they will call me at within 10 days to tell me another monitor just like mine or better has been shipped. They also asked if I had shipped my original monitor yet. I replied no and they said not only would they pay for shipping of the replacement monitor but the original dead one as well. 10 Days passed. 15 Days Passed. I've called a few time and now im told 'we're workin on finding a replacement'. Fast forward 2 weeks, KDS calls me threatening to bill me for $250 for a monitor that i had rma'd. The rep was rude and finally gave in to looking up the other RMA which noted what had happened. It's now been another 3 weeks and I still haven't heard anything. Speaking of which I'm making a phone call after this :\
Interesting read. I agree though. I've had good luck a couple times "turboing" (never heard that phrase before)
Once when my mom was getting DSL and it sat for MONTHS with the request bouncing between several parts of the organization. Call up the executive offices and BAM dsl went live within a few days as I recall.
Then a while back I tried to get out of my Cingular contract. Constant "System Busy" errors when making calls (less than 50% would go thru). Support wouldn't budge on the termination fee (I argued that they were in breech as they weren't providing a serivce but still taking my money). Rep just said that it was just something I had to accept from a wireless service. Called the Cingular exec offices and explained my problem to the senior secretary type. Who interrupted me off halfway and she forwarded me to tier 1 support before I could say anything. Called SBC exec offices (the mega-entity that owns Cingular). Explained that 1) The Cingular rep essentially hung up on me, 2) the tier 1 rep said I should expect crappy service (I named names with both of them...) and 3) my problem. Got forwarded to a VP and got a credit on my next bill.
If you get to the right people, you'll typically get good results (they'd rather loose the $200 termination fee than have be tell my cell phone-buying friends how much cingular customer service sucks I guess...)